


blackened houses, morning skies

by winteryknights (BlackcatNamedlucky)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dreams, Forgiveness, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27252187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackcatNamedlucky/pseuds/winteryknights
Summary: He dreams again, for the first time in 200 years, his sleep no longer whiskey-soaked and fitful. This time, there is no coffin, no water rushing in his ears, and no screams curdling his blood.aka, 5 times Booker sees ghosts, & 1 time they’re real
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Andy | Andromache, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Everyone, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	blackened houses, morning skies

**Author's Note:**

> this loosely takes place in the universe of my series, [the grave and the garden](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852273), but reading that is not necessary to understanding the plot. the important notes are that Quynh does not return 6 months into Booker's exile, instead, 10 years in, the remainder of the Guard track him down in Paris and eventually they are all able to rescue her together. the dreams he has are taking place over that 10 year time span.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There is a man prostrated at the altar, and he seems impossibly far away. Sebastien would think him a priest were it not for the way his hair is long enough to be tied back at the nape of his neck, the plainness of his tunic, and the blood that decorates it._

_“You may feel no purpose  
Nor a point for existing  
It’s all just conjecture and gloom”_

He dreams again, for the first time in 200 years, his sleep no longer whiskey-soaked and fitful. This time, there is no coffin, no water rushing in his ears, and no screams curdling his blood. Instead, he’s at the back of the church he’d attended as a child, the one that he’d only returned to once as a man, at the start of his exile, to beg forgiveness.

Hazy, late afternoon sunlight streams through the high stained-glass windows, painting the empty pews with blurry facsimiles of their intricate designs, pigmented with the rich colors of jewels. Everything feels at once muted and vibrant, a buzzing in his veins accompanied by cotton in his ears. Through the rush of sensation and its absence, it takes him a moment to realize that he is not alone.

There is a man prostrated at the altar, and he seems impossibly far away. Sebastien would think him a priest were it not for the way his hair is long enough to be tied back at the nape of his neck, the plainness of his tunic, and the blood that decorates it.

He seems a man out of his time, certainly not of the age they live in now, and older still than Sebastien’s long-dead churchgoing days. The observation is solidified when Sebastien hears his muttered prayers, Latin recitations that had been retired centuries ago. He hears a liquid ‘v’ roll and drip off the man’s tongue and huffs out a laugh at the pronunciation before he is suddenly struck with the memory of an old, petty argument his family used to dredge up, just for the sake of fighting about something without the deadweight of consequences.

The memory pulls at him, tugging at his hands like an insistent child, and he finds himself walking towards the man, steps unsteady. He has to support himself on the smooth wood of the pews as he goes, though his heavy, shuffled footfalls seem to go unheard by the man at the altar.

That is, until he reaches the end of the aisle, sinking into the foremost pew with a relief that would have been appropriate had he walked for hours to get here, rather than mere seconds. The man’s prayers trail off and there is a moment of silence before he says, in a dying language that Sebastien could never forget, “I sometimes wonder if He can forgive me after everything I’ve done.” 

His voice is so familiar that it fucking _hurts_ , but for the life of him, Sebastien cannot place why. So instead he stares up at the ornate wooden cross before the both of them and hears the ghosts of every congregation that has found solace inside these four walls.

It takes him a moment, but he finds his voice and finally asks, in the language of his boyhood, “Have you been able to reach a conclusion?”

There is a pointed stillness in the air as the man sits up and back on his hips before turning to face him, and Sebastien realizes suddenly that he’s talking to Nicolò. There is no recognition in the piercing gaze that he turns on Sebastien, and his heart would ache for the fact if it weren’t clear that this is some version of the man that he’d never met.

Nicolò is clearly deep in thought, though it’s one of his expressions that Sebastien wouldn’t be able to read had he not known him for centuries, until the slightest uptick of his lips shows that he’s ready to answer. Sebastien thinks they may have had this conversation before, once, a _long_ time ago. Sometime between the time of Jean-Pierre’s death and Sebastien’s first visit to the Americas. The memory is drowned in alcohol, the finer details of the conversation melted away in its path. He thinks, maybe, he walked away feeling somewhat more whole.

“I have,” Nicolò says, and pauses, and Sebastien remembers all the times he’d resented the man for turning conversations into a waiting game. He wonders, now, if he could have learned something from that. Could have learned how to slow down, to taste his words before he speaks them to know whether they are laced with a bitter poison. Would that have changed anything?

Nicolò’s eyes find his again, from where they’d slid away while he thought, and there is a glimmer of something there. He thinks it may be kinship. “I think God forgives us every day,” he says at last. “He can see into my heart and know what is there, know what guides it. Sometimes, when it is Him, I need to be forgiven more than when it is not, but I do not think he begrudges us this.”

“Do you think it hurts Him?” Sebastien asks, not entirely sure he’s talking about God anymore.

Nicolò furrows his brow and thumbs at the rosary twisted around his fingers. “Perhaps. I think it may feel like a betrayal, for His words to guide us to hate instead of love. For His own creation to turn its back on Him, and say it is in His name.”

“But He forgives us anyway?”

“He does.”

Sebastien is quiet, though Nicolò’s gaze never leaves him, so he must sense that the other man isn’t quite done with the conversation.

“How do you know?” Sebastien asks, and a languid smile takes over Nicolò’s face.

“Because, every morning I wake up and my beloved smiles at me, and I know that if I am forgiven in his eyes, then I am forgiven in God’s. We must find our faith in others, or it is no faith at all. If God wanted us to be alone in our devotion, He would not have made Eve for Adam, nor given them sons.”

“Cain killed Abel,” Sebastien says, and it feels sour on his tongue.

“Yes. And God knew his grief as punishment enough, and protected him despite his sin.”

There is another long silence that stretches between them, while Sebastien builds the courage to ask for what he’s wanted to know the whole time.

“Could _you_ forgive such a betrayal?”

Nicolò’s jaw tenses ever so slightly and a hardness fills in the edges of his eyes. “I am not God,” he says, at first, and Sebastien’s heart almost shatters anew. “But, my beloved once told me that forgiveness is the thing that leads us out of the dark, and I have not yet known him to be wrong.”

The church bells start to ring overhead and Nicolò rises to his feet in a fluid motion. He looks down at Sebastien with an open sort of softness. “I hope you reach your own conclusion,” he says, with such raw sincerity that Sebastien knows he will. And he feels somewhat more whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my tirade against liturgical Latin pronunciation will never end. _there's no hard v's in Latin, Catholics are just insane_  
>  Nicky and Andy had this argument once when she heard him praying and use a hard v and he's never done it since.  
> anyways, i'm thinking this will likely be updated weekly, but we'll have to see what my schoolwork load is like.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this first installment of a fic idea that's been in my mind for a solid two months now, I was struck with the first scene while staring melancholically out my dorm window at the dreary skies and changing leaves & listening to Achilles Come Down. hence, y'know, the lyrics.  
> if you want to chat you can find me on tumblr at [the-sneering-menagerie](https://the-sneering-menagerie.tumblr.com). I also have a writing blog & take requests at [redking-scripting](https://redking-scripting.tumblr.com)  
> as always, comments & kudos make my day!


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